Time Warner’s Turner To Use The Cloud Computing Offerings Of Amazon Web Services

Amazon has revealed that the broadcast unit of Time Warner, Turner, has signed up for cloud computing services offered by Amazon Web Services. The deal will see Turner brands such as TNT, CNN as well as other cable channels move their content and computing operations to Amazon’s cloud services provider. Neither Time Warner nor Amazon revealed the value of the deal. Previously Turner used its own in-house data centers.

In the last one year Amazon Web Services has recorded growth of 42% year-on-year. The online retailer’s market share in cloud computing is close to 32% which translates to a value of $14.4 billion according to Canalys, a research firm. Despite the strong growth Alphabet and Microsoft’s cloud computing units are growing at a faster rate.

Rapid growth

In this year’s third quarter, the annual growth rate of Microsoft Azure was 90% and this saw the Redmond, Washington-based software maker manage a market share of 14%. On the other hand Alphabet’s cloud computing unit grew at a rate of 76% and managed a market share of 6%.

The winning of Turner’s cloud computing business by Amazon coincides with a new report predicting that members of Amazon’s membership program, Amazon Prime, are expected to spend between 20% and 25% more during the holiday shopping period this year. According to Daniel Ives, an analyst at GBH Insights, close to half of all online purchases in the United States will be on Amazon between November and the New Year. Last year Amazon’s market share was 38%.

“The ring-fence that Amazon has built around its Prime customer base has significantly benefited the company in a fiercely competitive Cyber Monday pricing environment with much more competitive prices from Walmart in particular seen across inventory during the day,” wrote Ives in an investor note.

Holiday shopping season

According to Adobe Insights, the holiday season of 2017 will mark the first time digital transactions will exceed $100 billion. The firm which measures about 80% of online sales by major retailers in the United States reported that over $6.5 billion was spent on Cyber Monday. Over Thanksgiving Day digital sales were $2.87 billion while the online sales on Black Friday were $5.03 billion.

One observation that was made by Adobe Insights was that more shoppers were using their smartphones rather than desktop computers to initiate orders. This has seen retailers such as Kohl’s, Home Depot, Target and Walmart make investments in mobile in order to align themselves with the changing behavior of consumers.